As a student of American politics since the age of nine, I have often been fascinated with the phenomenon of political parties known as third, minor or ‘splinter’ parties as the cartoonist Walt Kelly so famously called them in his Pogo political cartoons. These minor parties have influenced many American presidential elections and have won a small amount of congressional and local elections, but have never been able to really break the monopoly of power held by the current two-major-parties system since the American War Between the States.
However, beginning in the late 1990s, signs have begun to emerge that this two-party power monopoly is beginning to crumble due to the realization on the part of the American people, that they can make a difference by becoming more involved in the system. This deterioration of the monopoly of power has led to the fracturing of one major political party and signs now exist that it will soon lead to the disintegration of the other.
The history of this phenomenon began back in 1976 with the challenge of former Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota to the political establishment represented by the two major parties. McCarthy ran an independent bid for the Presidency that year despite the laws regulating elections being decidedly unfriendly to minor party candidates. Due to these laws, McCarthy spent much of his time and campaign money in legal challenges to strike these laws down.
McCarthy did not have as big of an effect in the actual presidential election as he had hoped, but the real accomplishment of his campaign lay in winning his legal battle against the anti-minor-party laws in fifteen states. Thanks to McCarthy’s efforts, a friendlier climate for minor parties to run campaigns and spread their message was created and the opportunity now existed for real challenges to the two-party power monopoly to be launched.
It would not take long for others to take advantage of the new freedoms McCarthy had won for the minor parties. From 1976 to 2008 (with the exception of 1984), large anti-two-party-establishment presidential candidacies would be launched and would receive anywhere from half a million to as many as nineteen million votes in every presidential election during this period. Before this time, between 1865 and 1976 specifically, third parties’ influences on elections had usually lasted for an election or two but were prone to rise and then fade and so fail to make a sustained impact on the system. However, following 1976, third parties began to make a sustained impact and, with the exception of Reagan’s landslide in 1984, at least one minor party per presidential election would consistently poll around half a million votes at least. This consistent showing of strength by minor parties had never before been seen in American politics. What it signaled was that McCarthy’s rebellious spirit against the two-party-system had been instilled into the American people and this, coupled with public anger against government scandals such as Watergate, Billy Carter and Iran-Contra, led to public discontent with a simple choice between two parties more concerned with power then with statesmanship.
Where the biggest impact of the new-found election freedoms began to show, however, was in the more local elections. In 1990, third party candidates won two state governorships followed by two more in 1994 and 1998. As the 2000s began, two U.S. Senate seats were won by third party candidates. What made this unique was that many of these minor party candidates were regarded as, or ran ‘outside’ the political establishment and they came from many different political backgrounds. Despite this however, the two-party power monopoly in the nation was not seen as truly threatened yet. It would take a crisis of truly epic proportions to expose the ineffectiveness of the two-party system and provide an environment for the change of the current two-party-system to something radically different.
The crisis which would provide the environment for political system change turned out to be the American Great Recession which began in 2008. As the United States’ economy began to deteriorate in a rapid and disturbing fashion, the anger of the voters was turned against the major political party currently in power, namely the Republicans. This led to a substantial victory by the Democratic Party in the 2008 elections. However, instead of the situation improving, it became worse and America sank deeper in economic trouble.
When it became obvious to the people that the two major parties were not able to solve the distressing problems afflicting America many began to take action for themselves. The first actions were peaceful protests and political activism which would receive the name of the Tea Party Movement. As the protests were seen to not be enough to influence the politicians in Washington and the state capitols, the people began to take political action for themselves and with that move, the political structure of America began to change.
The 2010 elections were what blew open the two-party system. With the Tea Party movement looking to challenge the party currently in power, the Democrats, they put forward their own candidates to run in the Republican local primaries. Republicans who identified themselves with the establishment of power in Washington D.C., (whom we shall refer to as ‘Establishment Republicans’) soon were faced with ‘revolts’ in their local parties by the Tea Party activists which threatened their base of power. These ‘Tea Party Republican’ candidacies soon began to seriously threaten the power structure of the Republican Party and Establishment Republicans soon began to fight back to retain their power.
Tea Party Republicans did manage to win some nominations but the Establishment Republicans also retained some nominations for themselves as well. Unwilling to settle for only some of the nominations, and with so much seen to be at stake in the upcoming elections, both Establishment and Tea Party Republicans began to mount challenges outside the major party labels in the general election. Indeed, the number of serious third party/independent challenges to the candidates running under the major party labels was astounding. It set the stage for a very intense series of elections in 2010.
In Colorado, Rhode Island and Maine, Establishment Republicans mounted independent/third party challenges to Tea Party Republican nominees in the gubernatorial races. In Rhode Island the Independent/Establishment Republican was elected, in Colorado the Third Party/Establishment Republican cost the Tea Party Republican the race and in Maine the Independent/Establishment Republican’s effect was only off-set by the entry of a well-known independent liberal into the race which split the Democratic vote and off-set the effect of the Republican split.
On the other side, Tea Party Republicans also mounted challenges to Establishment Republican nominees in gubernatorial races like Idaho and Wyoming. With the Tea Party movement still in its beginning stages, however, the organization was not yet positioned to make as big of an impact as originally hoped and the Establishment Republican candidates easily won in both states. Though the results were not what they would have hoped for, the Tea Party Republicans’ potential for growth in future elections was easily obvious.
These election fireworks spread to several U.S. Senate races as well. Revolts in the form of third party/independent candidacies took place on both sides. Establishment Republicans mounted independent challenges to Tea Party Republican Senate nominees in Alaska and Florida and tried to mount one in Utah while Tea Party Republicans backed a Libertarian Party challenger to the Establishment Republican nominee in Indiana. In addition, seeking to discredit the Tea Party Republican nominees in certain states like Nevada and Delaware, where they lacked the ability to run independent general election challenges, several Establishment Republicans either endorsed the Democratic candidate or left the Tea Party Republican nominee unsupported.
The results would further show the division of the Republican Party. In Utah and Florida, the Tea Party Republicans would win the Senate seats, while in Alaska the Independent/Establishment Republican candidate won a bitterly contested election over the Tea Party Republican and in Nevada and Delaware the Establishment Republicans’ efforts to discredit the Tea Party Republicans would result in a narrow victory for the Democrats.
This saga took place in almost every political race in 2010, right down to the state legislatures with Establishment Republicans and Tea Party Republicans fighting primary races almost as bitterly contested as the general election races would be. The division was deep and coming after some decades of growing dissatisfaction with the Political Establishment in Washington D.C. and the state capitols, the breach between these two factions of the Republican Party can be said to be: irreparable.
2010 signaled the end of an era in American politics. The budding movement towards the break-down of the two-party-system has finally begun to blossom. The movement to break up the two-major-party system, which began to grow from 1976 onward, has finally begun to ripen.
So why did this break-down of the system happen and what has been the purpose of this history lesson? American politics is no longer a simple battle between conservatives and liberals; it has now turned also into a battle between the status-quo and supporters of change within the realms of liberals and conservatives. On the conservative side, the split between the supporters of change and the supporters of the status-quo has led to a breach in the Republican Party which has led many veteran politicians, such as Senator John McCain, to predict that a new national party will be formed soon. What Mr. McCain and many others fail to realize is that the new party is already here, they have just not made the breach official. The 2010 elections make that clear. The breach will not become official until the battle for the control of the Republican Party is settled in an upcoming election such as 2012, 2014 or 2016(if America lasts that long). Once the Establishment or the Tea Party takes control of the Republican Party, the losing faction will officially break away and form a new party to better represent whatever principles they believe they should stand for.
There is also a breach on the liberal side of the aisle in the Democratic Party, but it has not reached the breaking point level that the breach within the Republican Party has. Frustration with President Obama, his fellow Congressional Democrats and their hold on power in Washington has led to a level of discontent among liberals which has vented itself in the protests of the Occupy Wall Street movement, but has yet to channel itself into actual political action against the Democratic Establishment. That may be changing in the near-future, however. Congressman Ron Paul has been receiving a substantial amount of support from discontented Democratic liberals in his presidential campaign and if liberals are inspired by his example to stand up to their own establishment, then a internal battle between ‘Establishment’ Democrats and ‘Populist’ or popular-opinion-oriented Democrats can not be far away.
In all, if these scenarios play out as they have been doing for the past three and a half decades, then the evidence is clear. America has now transitioned into a three party system which will soon be official. It already is official in states such as Minnesota, Alaska and Colorado where a three party system exists and as the states go, so eventually goes the nation. When the Democratic Party becomes embroiled in its own internal battle, it too will split and when it does then the American political system will have finished its transformation and will have become a four-party system. Will the four-party system survive and serve America better then the two-party system has? We must wait and see.
© 2012 New Agora and The Subsidiarity Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be re-published, re-broadcast, re-written or re-distributed without written permission from blog author.
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